welcome to part three tutorial on general defenses and the defense we're going to look at in this session is in Caucasian so intoxication is classed as a general defense because in theory it can be raised for any crime but then to look at today is how we would apply this and evaluate this defense in any scenario or essay so we will look at any different types of intoxication once we've established what until it actually is and the outcomes depending on the crime that has been meted buttered and then whilst now it's no secret that over the last 40 or 50 years the use of alcohol has become more of an increasing problem in our society and of course the government has had to respond to that there has to be an addenda on how we tackle the effects on what we call as binge drinking but also the effects of alcohol or drug use when it becomes a dependency so a condition if you like and of course with that being an agenda of the government the courts also have to be mindful of how they deal with defendants who raise this as a defense to a crime and particularly those more serious crimes with high-level men Draya so we're going to look at the rules first of all then we will discuss that in more detail what is intoxication essentially add you can probably gather it covers both excessive drink and run there's a general rule although this is a defense the courts have limited the availability of this defense to a defendant where they have voluntarily placed themselves in a state of intoxicant huge to drink alcohol all they choose to take drugs particularly prohibited drugs those unlawful drugs if they choose to do so and commit an offense general roids that they most likely won't be able to rely on the defense but we will look at that in relation to specific crimes if a defendant has become involuntarily intoxicated the defense will more likely be available to them and have a think why I mean essentially what a defendant would be if they become involuntarily intoxicated so despite they take a drug that have or drink that has the opposite effect to which they could ever realize or understand and essentially they are blameless they become intoxicated through no fault of their own so you can see from a policy point of view this would be something an instance where the courts and of course the government would see that more leniency should be available so first of all we would need to identify how the defendant has come to be intoxicated is this through voluntary circumstances or involuntary circumstance so what the defense is in essence is that if you raise it if you raise intoxication you were saying that you were so intoxicated so we have to look at the level of intoxication you are capable of forming required mens rea of the offense and of course that may extend even further if you are so intoxicated through drink or drugs maybe that renders you being a unable to commit voluntary acts as well maybe you end up with no control over your physical actions which of course extends to ultimate ISM as a defense as well ultimate ISM is about no voluntary control over your act but primarily this is about the men's raya this is about your state of mind and of course as i said we have to take heed of the level of intoxication as well and practically evidentially in course there are experts who give evidence on the effect of intoxication on a defendant and of course we have levels of acceptable intoxication in our legal system if you are given a breath test there are certain levels milliliters of alcohol in your breath that the police would be looking for to determine whether you are over the legal limit for driving for example in some countries there is a zero tolerance policy on that and each light detection trace would mean that you would be criminally liable but here we do have the levels and the dangerousness of having levels accept levels is any expert will tell you that it depends on the defendant themselves a whole number of factors taken into account height weight age the amount that you've eaten that day the level of physical activity that they and generally you know there's a load of things that are taken into account you have to sleep so what could be acceptable as a level for one person wouldn't be for another and could actually render you being over their limit so of course this is a defense that a defendant may want to raise but what they're saying is the level of intoxication was so great that they were incapable forming the crime and as we've looked at with previous defenses the general principle still applies if you raise a defense there is a burden on you to bring evidence to show that you are at in that particular way so for the defendant here the burden would be on them to prove that they were so intoxicated that they were incapable forming the required elements of the crime the required ingredients needed the actor stressed and the mentor elements and what happens is even if the defendant can prove that they lacked the required mens rea for some crimes they might still be liable and this depends on the type of crime that they've committed now the courts categorized all crimes into two that lump them into two categories and the this is the basic content category main specific content category now we have looked at these rules in relation to ultimate ism when we come to the third test of ultimate ISM is the defendant blameless or have they induced themselves into a state of automatism the same rules apply here for intoxication in terms of we have to look at what crime the defendant has committed to establish whether they would have a defense or not though look at those categories we have two we have specific intent crime categories and basic intent crime categories now I haven't put them up here because I'm hoping that you can remember for the purposes of ASEAN or what those different crimes are so specific intent crimes are those with the intention to do something specific so it's not the basic intention or any recklessness this is intention to do something specific with basic intent crimes on the other hand these crimes include the mens rea of recklessness you could form the basic intention so intention to be some harm for example or the realizing of a risk that a crime will be committed this is a lot lower level Minter a recklessness of lowest level it could be culpable law so just pause this and see if you can please write down the crimes that will come under specific and the crimes that will come under basic so hopefully you've identified four specific intent crimes these would be murder section 18 grievous bodily harm or wounding so the base is that for both of these you need to have intention to either kill or cause serious harm property offenses which have specific mens rea of both dishonesty and of course the intention to permanently deprive the other of the property and then you have attempts require specific intention to commit those crimes so for attempted murder it would be intention to kill remember through the case of why brown for the basic intent crimes you've got crimes of manslaughter remember unlawful act or reckless manslaughter covering this in particular you've got sex in 20 grievous bodily harm or wounding on the basis of intention to cause some harm or recklessness as the mens rare and then if course you've got the assault battery and if the injuries greater the assault and/or battery occasion inactive bodily harm all of those require a basic intention or recklessness so just note that all property offenses and offense there are no kind of corresponding AC intent crimes so if you wanted to drop somebody down from a specific and crime of murder you put onto them with manslaughter instead responding alternative basic crime and the same for section 18 grievous bodily harm or wounding the alternate crime YouTube / Todd would be section 20 but there are no reckless property offenses and there are no reckless attempt crimes so there are a couple of gaps here which is a bit of an issue as we'll see later on but what we're going to do now is go into the rules of voluntary and involuntary intoxication so the rule for voluntary intoxication is if you are if you become voluntarily intoxicated and you are evidentially incapable of forming the men trail then you may have a defense to specific intent crimes not to basic intent crimes so this rule comes from the case of beard writing for public prosecution's running the case the appeal against beard severe was a defendant who whilst intoxicated voluntarily raped a thirteen year old girl whilst doing that he put his hand over him now the stop her screaming she ended up dying of suffocation he raised intoxication here and claimed that he didn't he didn't intend to kill her of that he was charged with murder as the primary offense this case went all the way up to the House of Lords as it was then and famous judge Lord Birkenhead his name is said essentially if I summarize kind of what he said he said until the 19th century voluntary drunkenness has never been an excuse for criminal misconduct and was actually considered an aggravating feature you see we've talked about this before the fact that intoxication could be an aggravating feature when sentencing appealed in fact increase the sentence so it's really bizarre to think that it could also be a defense it could be something that lessens probability so Lord Birkenhead is recognizing Lutz is really serious toxication usually aggravates the seriousness of a crime but what he then went on to said and to get to say was that where a specific intent is an essential element of an offense and the state of drunkenness renders the defendant incapable of forming that intent and he cannot be convicted of that crime so where did where beard here was so drunk through his own volition of course so drunk he couldn't form the intention to kill or cause serious harm to this poor victim legally he just simply cannot be convicted of murder and what Birkenhead went on to say was that therefore he must instead be guilty of homicide unlawfully without the malice aforethought than that is manslaughter so the rule is if you cannot form the men prayer for a specific intent crime then you should be charged with the basic intent crime instead or responding basic content okay and that's the rule but as I pointed out here the previous slide not all specific intent crimes have alternative crime to charge so if beard had committed theft burglary or robbery or an attempted murder he would not have had an alternative crime to be charged with and if you cannot form the men's prayer for that specific crime then what happens here is that the femme has a complete defense so the outcome essentially is if you have if there is an alternative basic intent on the defense act culturally it lowers your liability to the next I'm available but if there isn't an alternative basic crime you have four complete defense so this that's partially or fully depending on the crime you commit is this fair potentially not because it's almost luck really depending on the crime you commit as to whether you have a partial or full defense even though you are voluntarily putting yourself in that state of intoxication it is an issue that is recognized by our reform bodies and you might ask well why if you're voluntarily intoxicated and incapable of forming men prayer are you guilty of a basic intent crime instead anyway why would you be guilty of manslaughter if you can't form the mens rea it's what the next slide is about the reasoning behind this comes from the case of Majewski 1977 so the defendant Majewski been taking drugs and alcohol and was involved in a fight with three people he also attacked officers I'd to arrest him he was predicted of a number of offences main lead abh absolutely harm and the section 47 and also assaulting police officers he raised intoxication what type of crimes our needs we go back to your table hopefully you can see these are basic intent crimes where only basic intention or recklessness is available so you could be guilty of a crime if you realize the risk of committing the crime and go ahead anyway he was unsuccessful on intoxication what the court said was intoxication is not available the crimes of basic intents are those involving necklaces and they said this is because the active voluntarily becoming intoxicated being as reckless but in itself so I wonder what you think about the fact that if you decide to get drunk or decide to take drugs therefore by law you are seen as reckless and you can be found guilty of any subsequent basic intent crime or recklessness is the ingredient so it's a very blanket approach to finding defendants still guilty despite being intoxicated so for specific crimes they have more of a chance of being found not guilty or shally or fully but if you commit a basic intent crime you are deemed to be reckless and therefore intoxication will just simply not be available to you as a defense and that was the case in 1977 although 22 years later we had a bit of a development involved two defendants two students Richardson and Irwin who caused serious injury to another to G then obviously all instance or on the fact they were all drinking and they rule mucking around what we call horseplay by law which as you know could amount to consent if somebody is harmed but of course serious injuries take you out of the realms of consent the most part these defendants raised intoxication they said they couldn't form the mens rea ax to the causing of the serious injuries the grievous bodily harm injuries and this did go up to the House of Lords as a point of Appeal and in the end they were not guilty and that's because the House of Lords decided to expand the principle of Majewski rather than say you're absolutely guilty based on recklessness through drinking you should have foreseen that something like this may have happened or would be likely to happen but in fact it was the defendants themselves had foreseen relevant risk of committing that crime had they have been sober an interesting question because you might think Bolivia lifts students over a balcony or a student over a balcony when sober it's possibly foreseeable isn't it that they have suffered serious injuries you'd see that risk if you were worse over and of course that's the point really if you can't see the risk when you're drunk and arguably you're not reckless and so they were not guilty and what's actually does is this makes the recklessness test a bit more subjective this is about whether the defendant they're sober selves would see the risk if they would see the risk then of course we have to compare that so they're being compared to their sober selves if you like so it does kind of widen the availability of the defense because of course if you foresee the risk yourselves when sober you wouldn't go on to commit it if it's the drink that impairs that foreseeability argue be the defense should be available so I hope that makes sense we'll go on to another principle now this is one of Dutch courage what happens where a defendant has formed the intention to commit the crime before they actually commit the crime and they drink to build up enough courage to commit the act this originates from the pace of Balladur in a very important case because you have an attorney general here taking control of the prosecution it's not Liam or Noel Gallagher so it's simply the bit was there because for the name and so the facts are Gallagher wanted to kill his wife he bought a knife and a bottle of whiskey we drank to give himself courage to do it once intoxicated so once in the state he stabbed and killed his wife with a knife now he argued at the time of the crime I was intoxicated therefore I couldn't form the meant drown he was convicted went up the House of Lords and they upheld his conviction to murder if he had formed the relevant mens rea at the relevant time the famous phrase was a drunken intent it's still an intent which makes sense why would you want a defendant to have a defense partly or fully when they've made a decision to commit a crime and then they drink to give them the courage to do it but of course if you think strictly about the legal principle at the time of the crime arguably he may not have been able to form a specific mens rea oh and of course remember if we go back to our principles of criminal liability yeah just read and the mens rea have to coincide they have to meet they have to overlap for a defendant guilty this arguably means that a defendant has formed the mens rea er prior to the crime the mantra is absent time of committing the crime and we only have the actus reps which would mean there is no coincidence but of course the House of Lords hereby saying they've formed the relevant mentor at the relevant time they're recognizing there is a link forming the intention prior to the crime you know the circumstances of this really on a policy level of Public Safety level would dictate that this defendant happy but you can see the dilemma here okay so move on to involuntary intoxication which is a bit more wider the easier do be successful on because of course with involuntary intoxication you are claiming that this has been against your will there's no foreseeability here these are situations where you didn't intend or didn't want to become intoxicated potential situations where this could more commonly than ever being spiked without your knowledge being unaware that you are consuming the drugs or alcohol taking prescription drugs those that maybe have the opposite effect or have serious side effects that you wouldn't have been aware of or having an unexpected reaction to drugs that would otherwise calm use remember soporific means arming so these potential situations give rise to involuntary intoxication but of course we still have to identify the level of intoxication because you could be spiked but with a very low level you may still know what you're doing side effects may be very minor and again you may still be able to form the mens rare so the burden is still on the defense bring evidence to show that not only was this a case of involuntary spiking or intoxication through the circuit answers but also the level meant that the defendant still perform the mens rea and there are two kind of key cases in this area that I want to raise your attention to so on the basis of drugs having opposite effects you've got the case of Hardy from 1984 so hopefully you can remember the facts of this because this we've looked at this in relation to automatism as well this was a defendant who tip-top horrific drugs valium which ended up having the opposite effect on him obviously valium is used usually to calm he just gone through a bad breakup he's hunting prescribed for him which I think people always struggle to understand the court's decision of success because if you take drugs that are not prescribed to you then surely there is a realization of a risk taking these drugs and he's also Todd it's be drugs were in fact out of date was maybe add to the recklessness here but nevertheless he set fire to wardrobe with ex-girlfriends clothes within it and he was charged with criminal damage caused by arson with a criminal damage act he said at trial he remembered nothing of the incident due to the intoxication he was permitted the jury and the judge sorry initially directed the jury that this was voluntary intoxication on the reasons after said really this is a taking of drugs that aren't prescribed for you so therefore surely there's a realizing of the risk here but on appeal and the court overturned that decision that if the valium was taken to calm his nerves because of the break-up there was no evidence of any knowledge of risk in this having the opposite effect it did take the opportunity by way of overt up Victor English me circumstance it from cases of driving or self-administering of direct dangerous drugs did say this type of these circumstances are unique if you like and this isn't going to extend to those type of cases really important case the one it really illustrates that although this is a blanket defense you are involuntary intoxicated it doesn't distinguish between the different specific and basic intent crimes this will only be a defense where the defendant cannot form the mens rare due to that involuntary intoxication in the case of Kingston is a great illustration as I say so Kingston was a known pedophile and a business associate set out to drug him with the aim of being able to blackmail him essentially the invited around his flat a once there spiked his drink and took him to a room where a fifteen year old boy was asleep and hoped to abuse him Kingston did and there were photographs taken of the attack now think them was initially convicted by jury despite his involuntary intoxication so claiming to have no understanding of what he did at the time the Court of Appeal when he appealed actually quashed his conviction on the basis of him being able to prove that he had met his drink had been spiked problem was during trial he'd admitted that he would have intended to assault the boy and had he not have been intoxicated which essentially meant that the mens rea was there so when the prosecution then appealed against this acquittal up to that house lords is convicted what's reinstated and this just really shows you that you could your drink could be spiked we could be involuntarily intoxicated but mens rea is still there it's still present it won't be an offense to you so we've gone through the different types of intoxication the voluntary intoxication the involuntary intoxication rules hopefully you've identified the involuntary intoxication is going to be more available to you as a complete offense provided that you couldn't form the vendor at the time we've also looked at the difference between the specific and basic content crime categories so this part may take you a few minutes I want you to use this diagram and see if you can complete the boxes by going back through the rules looking at your notes and further than that see if you can annotate this diagram with relevant cases please pause that and do that now and this is what I hope you've come up with you see full voluntary intoxication if the defendant has voluntary intoxicated themselves if they've committed a specific intent crime then they will have either a partial or a complete defense provided they cannot form the mens rare and of course this depends on the crime so if they commit the crime of murder it will be a partial defense because their liability will be reduced to manslaughter if they complete the offense of theft then they will have a full defense of complete defense because there is no alternative basic crime to charge them with and those rules come from DPP V beard remember in terms of forming the mentor air a drunken intent is still an intent and you could also look up late the case but also uses that principle Shion and more it's really interesting case and have a look at it and you can add it to your notes there for the basic intent crimes committed once voluntary you will have no defense to your crime if you are deemed to have been acting recklessly and those rules come from Majewski and Richardson and Irwin remember the court will consider your view of the act being reckless had you been sober as well so it's a bit more subjective than the blanket no defense or involuntary intoxication you'll have a complete defense of specific and basic intent crimes provided that you cannot form mens rea and remember the two key cases air or Kingston and Hardy Kingston being of course authority on the defendant must not be able to form the mens rea and Hardy being authority on the widening if you like have involuntary intoxication to include the voluntary taking of drugs supper if ik drugs that have the opposite effect I hope that helps and what we're going to do once you've annotated that it's move on to some some application looking at what we might do or how we might apply these rules to turn scenarios so please have a look at this scenario it's typical 25-minute exam scenario but if it was some intoxication this type of thing it would look like and the question might be advised Alvin his liability for offences against Ella and Claire so we have to identify what offenses he's committed and of course any defenses and I've need you two to consider intoxication here and the question might be specific on that point the police ports have read this hopefully you've identified that against Ella Alvin has committed an assault occasioning actual bodily harm to the assault being shouting loudly at her she faints but four months off would she's unwilling to leave her house which makes this actually an abh on the basis of psychiatric injury against Claire he could possibly be charged with grievous bodily harm on the basis of her suffering weak bones is likely to cause greater injury to her so using the case of Bolin we can charge higher level crime there arguably section 20 grievous bodily harm on the basis that he kicks out wildly would be difficult to prove any specific intention to cause the serious harm here and although he certainly caused her serious hard you know take your victim itchy find them the causation rule she suffers from weak bones we can use Blau and both volunteers that make sure that he can be charged with the greater injury crime here the question is of course is out'n gonna be liable because he's painting drugs prescribed by his doctor for illness and then he's drunk a number of glasses of whiskey and he's claiming he can't remember anything that happened after he shot Ella I believe identified those parts of the scenario as really important and at one point he feels a great rage so using our diagram the first question is what type of intoxication is he suffering from now howdy have just been the effects of the drugs prescribed by his doctor I'd be paying involuntary intoxication but he has also drank a number of glasses of whiskey as well so it could be that a court consider this to be a voluntary intoxication instance yeah if they consider it to be voluntary then what type of crimes has he committed specific or basic intent crimes for abh and grievous bodily harm section 20 hopefully you've identified these as basic content crimes then we've come down to the next of the flavor what will be the outcome he would be deemed to be reckless obviously if the court decided that he would have foreseen permission of a crime when sober they might allow him a defense but blanketly applying the Majewski rules he's unlikely to have a defense here so that's if it's considered to be voluntary if the corpse by nature of his prescribed drugs I said that this to be in violent trade which is to say as unlikely because he has decided to drink a number of glasses of whiskey but if they said involuntary and of course he would have a defense budget he can't form the mens rea on the issue for me is in relation to Bella he feels a great rage he goes into a cafe he sits down at a table feels great this tells me that he probably cancelling the mens rea broads Bella and so he probably wouldn't have a defense spell her anyway but it turns a Claire he's saying he can't remember anything that happened after each other Bella that potentially he has a defense against Claire so he may be guilty against Bella and not guilty against Claire if involuntary intoxication is the case so I hope that makes sense and see if you could have a go at writing that out to make sure that you're able to apply the rules but using the diagram hopefully you see how I've just done that will help you and what we'll do is move our final scenario application practice please pause and take a minute to read this so we've got Carol and Diana having both fairly committed offenses Carol Carol's liability being covered in the first paragraph I had a second so Carol takes a leather jacket from the back of it mistaking it for her own very similar jacket which she isn't that left at home he's potentially Beth Kia but what type of intoxication does Carol have so they've began the evening by drinking half bottle vodka more drinks in the pub and each in an ecstasy tablet so hopefully you agree with me that this is voluntary intoxication so looking at our diagram Carol is voluntarily intoxicated is committed the offense of theft which is a specific crime so if you look at the next box down she will have a defense provided there is no alternative basic crime and she can't form the mens rea so we know there is no alternative basic crime for theft there's no reckless theft so it all comes down to whether she we can prove dishonesty and intention to permanently deprive and it's unlikely on the facts um I think he obviously believes that it's hers although this is a mistaken belief due to being intoxicated and as we'll see on the next slide its if a call to use this defense where you're mistaken due to intoxication actually the outcome of this would be it depends on whether she is deemed to afford the mens rea and how much weighting the corpus on her mistake due to intoxication with Diana again voluntarily intoxicated what she commits and she pokes the Dorman's I with her finger and knocks him unconscious with her umbrella so she's perfectly committed I'd say a BH level in routier the poke in the eye and the loss of consciousness we know from the TV BP would be a BH level so this is a battery a paging actual bodily harm so we have voluntary intoxication we have a BH level injuries which hopefully you've identified as a basic intent level offense so she's known to be unlikely to have a defense based on her intoxication being reckless so Carol may be successful Diana unlikely to hope that helps and again you could have a go with writing those out and the practice that would be really useful as I've just mentioned making a mistake due to intoxication is seen as the courts are less likely to allow you this particularly if this is due to voluntary intoxication and I refer to a case of Lichtman 1970 where this was a man who took LSD so a hallucinogenic drug on a night owl he slept in bed with his girlfriend that night whilst he was hallucinating he believed he was being attacked by large serpents the evidence of him so large snakes and he was defending himself from that attack he woke up in the morning to find his girlfriend dead and he actually strangled so clearly killed her during this hallucination it was clear on the Ross you go back to your flowchart voluntary intoxication charged with murder which is a specific intent crime but the fact is he couldn't form the mens rea a' on his evidence of the intention to kill or cause serious harm to her and to that influence so he was convicted of the alternative basic crime of manslaughter so the courts still convicted him of something despite his mistake possibly in a genuine one and of course it kind of lends itself more to the self-defense argument he believes he's defending himself against an attack similar to the case of O'Grady if you remember we looked at this case 1987 in our settlement self-defense lesson and O'Grady of sleep under the influence of drugs drinks re believed that he was being attacked by somebody in his house and he killed them he claimed that he believed he would using self-defense but of course he was intoxicated at the time and he was not afforded the defense and this was subsequently inserted into the key legislation the self defense so if you remember the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2000 there it's a defendant can rely on self-defense even if they were mistaken as long as that belief is genuine that's under Section 60 76 in Bayview a blue box so you can in normal circumstances a mistaken in your belief the use of self-defense that comes from the previous case of Beckford he pays for self-defense there but no here unless that mistake was attributed to voluntary intoxication section 76 i've prevents the defendant from mistakenly overestimating force where they are intoxicated okay so let's move on to the evaluation of this area them so I've separated evaluation out into three kind of categories or three paragraphs the first being the fact the intoxication is an issue policy so it one that is on the government agenda it has risen and fallen over the last 50 years probably through lockdown is less issue than it ever has been to be honest until the pubs open soon but of course the role of the courts is the needs of balance the safety of the public against of course holding legal principle and that's where some of these legal principles we've learned in this session and really caused some difficulty we are blanketly labeling defendants as reckless so that we can enable a conviction but equally we are also allowing defendants defenses to murder where we say they're even though they are to blame for their intoxicated state they can't form the mens rea and you see the reason why it's such an issue and it's such an important decision and role of the courts in upholding this area and making sure that we don't set food strict or too lenient precedents is because intoxication is one of the main causes of crime in 2018 there were five hundred and sixty one thousand intoxicated intoxication related incidents intoxication is to blame for 39 percent of all violent incidents and that's in England and Wales because slightly higher in Scotland and it's slightly lower in Northern Ireland and the burden on the NHS and of course then tax payers makes up between 1.3 percent and 2.7 percent of taxpayers money this is a property between is quite a wide approximation but 21 million and 53 21 and 52 million pounds this is how much money we spend on the effects wrinkle drugs I defendants and people of course many of these instances we separate intoxication into those one-off incidents as binge drinking incidents or those that are dependent which of course require treatment and we then need to or that leads to more financial consideration there so although there are some inconsistencies or some potentially unfair decisions and we have to be mindful of the overriding objective of even the public safe which of course they the role of the court the author BLM Supreme Court but also making sure that we are backing those decisions of legally as well the need to form the men's room which kind of leads to the second point really the problem with the defense so all the rules fair should this be a defense at all some critics argue we shouldn't be able to have a defense at all in court dated and so really to develop its paragraph you need to be examining the rules of voluntary and involuntary intoxication and identifying whether they are fair identifying the inconsistencies and of course the rules depend on the categorizing of crimes does this system work is it consistent we know already that it isn't consistent there aren't corresponding basic alternative crimes for every specific crime the murder manslaughter grievous bodily harm it works but for the property offenses for attendance it doesn't there is no alternative basic crime which means that defendants will have a defense if within to the magistrates or berry that they couldn't form the mentor appetite so this is a problem so an example of a well-developed point one of which would get you and the three or four marks that's in an essay it's the role of the court to strike a balance between protecting the public and adhering to legal principle he applying rules relating to the tests and actor specimens were strictly as we seen that with beard with Majewski and weave kingdom this can lead to problems as it is necessary to criminalize wrongful behavior yet this can affect the ability of a defendant to raise a defense based on failure to meet the requirements of an offense ie and then drag the on pull the pace of Majewski made a blanket policy that if the defendant committed an offense which requires basic intent or recklessness in an intoxicated State and the defense is unavailable due to his conduct in reckless you could develop the point further by saying this is potentially unfair it means that anybody who chooses to become intoxicated is therefore deemed by law as reckless it certainly needs some reform so remember in an essay you're aiming for four well develop points you have a look at the other categories and try and come up with the more develop points there will get you into level four for an essay will be citation of reform we know that this area is problematic and we have a number of bodies that have reviewed this area it's the butler committee which was a what we call a Royal Commission set up perfectly in 1975 delivered offenses suggested that the current law be replaced with a new offense of dangerous intoxication now that would be related to self-induce where the prosecution would have to prove that the defendant became intoxicated voluntarily for the first offense the sentence would be one year imprisonment and then there would be a maximum three years perming is for any subsequent offenses that has not been implemented obviously and that there are some kind is that have considered it the Law Commission has reviewed this area across a number of years 1993 first and foremost where they released a report in 1995 and then later 2009 the paper called intoxication and criminal liability and he actually proposed the draft bill called criminal law in brackets intoxication post brackets bill but they reviewed the rules of intoxication both voluntary and involuntary and they suggested a number of things really you could read this report online for what they suggested was that rules like Majewski a kept but codified they suggest actually in the ninth end of 2009 paper to tighten the rules of involuntary intoxication in relating sex offenses so that would be reflecting the decision in Kingston if you like also what was give all crimes corresponding basic crime or get rid of those rules altogether and what they've always suggested is that the existing law be codified across these three years you've got here or for three or four years they've suggested to codify the existing area put it into a bill one code for everybody be able to find the law in one place I hope that helped and what I have on this side which you'll need to pause and just have a read of it it's really in-depth past it is an exemplar answer provided by OCR to the essay question the defense and intoxication is not fit for purpose and needs to be reformed urgently discuss the extent to which this statement is accurate so again a very common essay question so I want you to read this exemplar and it is available on the OTO website as well already present for how is it in structures and what does each paragraph cover and do you agree with this receiving eleven four marks which is we know it's an a a to operate so you've got a paragraphs of voluntary intoxication paragraphs on involuntary and then of course a paragraph on reform at the end and the linked conclusion so please do take time to read that and that will show you how an essay could look well don't you have finished intoxication and some advice from me for consolidation would be write out an a a one paragraph for each of your defenses of saluting intoxication you can use your diagram to do that so try and write your diaphragm out in two short paragraphs make sure you've got everything annotated with key legislation and case law you could put a law on two flash cards able to learn practice the application scenarios in this booklet if you need more you can ask me and then use my maps to write out your evaluation points and I hope you found that useful it is a bit more of a longer tutorial because the defense itself can be a bit more complex but I hope you very useful thank you